Always Faithful

Sweet Little Mary Sue

Synopsis: Tommy Conlon was a free man, he'd done nothing for which he ought to be ashamed, but would he ever be able to walk with his head held high? Lily Lewis was kind of a goofball, a woman who was the baby of her family, and also the wild card, the black sheep, the one who'd always fought against the grain and swam against the tide. Had she finally found someone who would understand her and accept her for who she wanted to be? And would she have the strength to stand up against her family's wishes one more time, now that she stood to lose so much if she didn't?

Disclaimer: I can't claim any part of Warrior as my own. I am simply borrowing the characters to tell this story (though I would be more than happy to keep Tommy, if that would be okay). The only things that belong to me are my OC, Lily, and everyone in her family.

*This story is rated M for violence, mild to moderate cursing and a variety of citrusy smut*

Chapter One

Lily's POV

I took a deep breath and pressed my finger against the button that rested by his front door and winced a little when I heard the chime ringing throughout his apartment. It seemed to be louder than a doorbell ought to be, it seemed a lot louder than my own buzzer was, but maybe that was because I was calling on him unannounced, one complete stranger trespassing on another, to offer a plateful of homemade brownies, all with the ulterior motive of getting an up-close and personal look at the celebrity who was now my next-door neighbor.

I shifted nervously from one foot to the other, until it dawned on me that I would undoubtedly give the impression of someone who needed desperately to pee, if he was to open the door at that moment, so I nipped my movements in the bud, only to find myself whistling and tapping my toe just a couple of seconds later. Maybe it was for the best that he wasn't answering the door, because God only knew what I was capable of when I saw him face-to-face. The list of possibilities for what I might do to thoroughly humiliate myself was endless, and best left to the imagination, I suppose, but if that was the truth, then why in hell did I feel the need to ring the damned doorbell again?

I'd never been someone who struggled with impulse control problems, I'd always been able to keep a firm grip on my thoughts and my actions, but you'd never know it with the way that I was acting at that moment. I had a good idea that he was home, so I ought to have recognized his failure to answer the first summons as an indication that he wanted to be left alone…but it could also mean that he was in the shower, and might come to the door bare-chested, with a towel resting low on his hips, just barely covering his…..

"For crying out loud, woman, get a grip on yourself, will you?" I hissed, knowing, without a shadow of a doubt, that my face was a humiliating shade of red, given the heat that I could feel radiating from it. "You've seen his bare chest before, along with God only knows how many other people. How different can it be with a towel instead of shorts…oh, Lord…yep, there it is. That's definitely a change of pace, isn't it?"

I'd always enjoyed the benefits of an active imagination, it was one of the things that I'd loved best about myself, but there were times such as this one when it was more of a hindrance than a help. I had to present myself as a friendly and stable individual, that is, I did if he ever bothered to answer the door, and my chances of doing so were slim indeed if I didn't chase the image of him standing in the doorway, wearing nothing more than a skimpy towel and a big smile, from my mind.

"That doesn't make any sense anyway," I told myself, shifting the platter of brownies from one hand to the other and flexing my fingers, which had grown tired from holding the tray of goodies for so long. "When did he ever smile when they showed him on TV? Okay, okay, there was that one time, but chances are pretty good that it might have been gas….."

I realized in that moment that I'd been mistaken when I thought that it would have been the worst thing possible for Tommy Conlon to open the door and find me with a bright red blush on my face, because it was so much worse for him to open it in time to hear me utter the word gas aloud. I knew then that the flush that I'd worn before had been a pale facsimile of all that was possible from a genuine blush, which was what was covering my face, and my ears, and my neck at that moment, while I searched, in vain, for a hole to dive into, so that I could hide from the world while I died in peace.

He wasn't decked out in a skimpy towel, he wasn't even bare-chested, and he was staring at me in a way that suggested that he was about five seconds, at the very most, away from calling the men in white coats to come and drag me away from his front door, and who could blame him? I would undoubtedly have the same reaction if I was to answer a summons to my front door and find some person who was obviously cracked in the head, holding a tray of God only knew what, while she was babbling to herself about gas.

"Can I help you with something?" he asked quietly, holding one hand on the doorknob, in a manner that said that he was ready to flee back inside the safety of his home at the first sign that I was on the verge of going batshit crazy, and who could blame him for taking that precaution? It bespoke of common sense on his part, but I didn't want him to leave until I managed to convince him that I was a perfectly sane, albeit slightly strange person, so I knew that I had to take these next crucial steps very slowly, and allow myself to think of each and every word before I spoke it aloud.

"I'm really sorry to barge in on you like this. I just wanted to introduce myself, because I'm your next-door neighbor, and I thought that I ought to stop by and say hello and bring you a little housewarming gift. I hope that you like turtle brownies, because that's what I brought you. They're my personal favorite, but not everyone shares the same taste and….."

I realized that I was babbling, and that wasn't a good thing for me to be doing if I was going to convince him that I was at least halfway normal. He was also staring at the platter in my hands as if he expected it to vomit on him at any moment. Seriously, he was looking at it like he was disgusted by it, or, perhaps, by its contents, and it dawned on me that he possibly disliked brownies, no, that he positively loathed them, and I wished, not for the first time, that I stayed with something simple, like sugar cookies, because honestly, who didn't like sugar cookies?

"You don't have to eat them, you know," I said, slowly backing away, so as not to offend him any further. "It won't hurt my feelings if you don't want them. I was just trying to be friendly and welcome you to the neighborhood….."

"Do they really have turtles in them?" he murmured, staring at the platter a moment longer, before he raised his eyes to mine. "I like chocolate, but I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't like turtles."

It always embarrassed me to snort when I laughed, but it was something that tended to happen in moments like this one, the times when I was trying my hardest to give the impression that I wasn't a dork. It also occurred to me that laughing at him wasn't the politest thing that I could do either, which was probably why I'd snorted in the first place, but the thought of putting ground up turtle in my brownies tickled me…at the same time that it made me feel sick to my stomach.

"They're turtle brownies because they have caramel and pecans in the center, like the Turtle candy," I explained, painfully aware of the fact that he hadn't laughed, that he hadn't even cracked a smile, which meant that he hadn't found the situation nearly as humorous as I had, not that I'd expected him to. "They're really very good, if I do say so myself….."

My voice trailed away when I remembered that I hated when people bragged on their own cooking. That was one of the reasons that I had so much trouble watching most of the shows on Food Network that were hosted by a famous chef, because they would inevitably taste what they'd made and blissfully close their eyes and make orgasmic sounds, before they declared that the bite of whatever they'd made was the most sublime thing that they'd ever tasted, and I would be disgusted by their blatant show of conceit…oh, God…I'd done it again, I'd drifted off into my own thoughts, and now he was watching me again, with that look that said that I frightened him.

"…..but you don't need to feel obligated to accept them, if you don't want to," I continued, as if I hadn't paused for more than a second. "I imagine that you have a lot that you need to do, and I'm keeping you from unpacking or cleaning, or possibly even a combination of the two, so I'll leave you in peace….."

"You never told me your name," he said quietly, reaching out to take the platter of brownies from my hands. "You said that you came to introduce yourself, but you haven't told me your name."

I was such an idiot. This wasn't the first time that I'd been hit with that realization, but this was the first time that he had…that is, it was, if he hadn't already drawn that conclusion the moment that he'd opened his front door and found me talking to myself about gas.

"I'm Lily Lewis," I said, holding out my hand and blushing all over again when I felt his warm and calloused hand close around mine. I was so glad that his skin wasn't soft, because I really disliked men who had palms that felt like they belonged to a woman, not that I had expected him to have hands like that. I would have been happy to hold his hand for the rest of the day, but the moment passed by in a heartbeat, and no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't think of a good excuse that would necessitate me grabbing him again.

"Tommy Conlon," he answered, with a twitch of his mouth that wasn't quite a smile, but which wasn't a frown either. "Thanks for the brownies that don't have turtles in them, and thanks for introducing yourself. I was cleaning and unpacking, but I don't mind stopping for a little break."

His words weren't exactly ones that said that he was pleased to see and meet me, but they weren't ones that told me that I was a pain in his butt, or ones that demanded that I scram and get out of his sight, because I disgusted him either. He'd also taken the non-turtle turtle brownies, which meant that he must have meant to eat them…unless he'd just taken them to be polite, that is.

"Well, I guess I'd better let you get back to work," I said, slowly backing away from him and waiting for him to step back inside, but he moved outside instead, and held open the door, in a way that I took as an invitation, or, rather, that I hoped was one.

"You can come in, if you want to," he said, and I forced myself to calmly close the space between my feet and his front door, reminding myself that I had to be relaxed and composed, even if I felt like launching myself into the spastic gyrations that I referred to as "Lily's Dance Of Happy". The dance always irritated my family, and they loved me, so it was inevitable that displaying it in front of Tommy would have him retracting his invitation in a heartbeat. I would wait until later, until I was by myself, where no one would see or judge me, I could do that…couldn't I?

Tommy's POV

It was kind of depressing to see what my life had come to, if I was to judge things based on my belongings. I had the basics to fill each room, but there wasn't much in the way of things that were personal or which had any meaning. I didn't have any knickknacks, nothing that I'd collected in my travels from here to there, then across the ocean and back, but that wasn't a bad thing, was it? That sort of junk just gathered dust, and who wanted to clean them, right? I didn't have a collection of photos like Pop either, I only had the one of me and Manny, but that was alright with me, because that was really the only one that I needed, at least it was, to my way of thinking.

The doorbell had caught me off-guard, and it had irritated me as well, because I'd immediately jumped to the conclusion that it was a reporter who'd come to bother me, someone that wanted to hear my story and ask me how the changes in my life had affected me, how losing Manny and the others had made me feel, and other assorted bullshit questions that pissed me off, and I just wasn't in the mood for that right now. The truth was that I was never in the mood for their crap, and I couldn't help but hope for the day that they would forget that I'd ever existed, and maybe then I'd have a little bit of peace.

It dawned on me that it might have been Pop who'd tracked me down, or maybe Brendan, and that wasn't any better than the prospect of having a reporter shout questions at me through the door. I knew that they both wanted to try out the whole reconciliation thing, and I could see where they were coming from, I really could, but I just wasn't ready to take that step, not yet, not when everything was still so new and raw and hurt so damned much.

I'd made my way to the front door, all set to send away whoever of the three that I found there, but then I got an eyeful of the woman on the other side of the door through the peephole, and knew, in an instant, that she wasn't a reporter. They brought cameramen with them, and big black bags, and were usually dressed in expensive suits, with perfectly groomed hair and heavy makeup. This woman was wearing jeans and a t-shirt and her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She looked like she was wearing makeup, but not the caked on crap that reporters wore. And she didn't have the big black bag either, she was carrying a plate covered with aluminum foil instead, and I'd had a good idea that she wasn't using it to hide a microphone.

I must have watched her for a minute or two, and she moved around the whole time, first from one foot to the other, then she shuffled the foil covered platter from one hand to the other, and I could see that her lips were moving almost the whole time as well, like she was talking to herself, and for just a moment I considered ignoring her until she went away, just in case she was nuts.

I can't say for certain what had made me open the door in the end, maybe it was because she was pretty, and it had been a long time since I'd been around that sort of person. Maybe it was because it was the polite thing to do, to greet her before I determined whether or not I'd tell her to get the hell away from me. Maybe, deep down, I knew that I wanted company, that I wanted someone to talk to. Either way, I told myself that it was okay, I told myself that she wasn't nuts, and I opened the door, just in time to hear her talking about gas…hmm, maybe I'd ruled that she was sane a bit too soon, don't you think?

"Have a seat," I said, gesturing widely around the room, so that she would understand that she could sit in the living room or at the table, whichever she preferred. "I think I'll try one of these brownies right now, if you don't mind. Would you like the join me?"

She chose the couch, but she didn't sit down like someone who was comfortable. She slowly lowered herself down, in a way that said that she was afraid the pressure of her ass on the cushion might detonate some hidden charge and blow her sky-high, and I felt a nearly overwhelming urge to laugh at her, and that surprised me, because it had been a long damned time since I'd felt the urge to laugh about anything.

"No," she said, then blushed and carefully shifted from one butt cheek to the other. "That is, I mean, no, I don't mind if you try one, but I don't think that I ought to, that is, that I need to have one with you, because I brought them for you, and it wouldn't be polite for me to take something for myself that I'd made for you, now would it?"

She was a chatty woman, that's for sure, so much so that she made my head spin, and it ought to have irritated me, it ought to have had me scrambling to throw her out, but for some weird reason I found that I actually enjoyed listening to her babble. It was another thing that she did that threatened to make me smile, and I tried to remember the last time that I'd wanted to do so in such a short amount of time.

"I'm going to have some milk with mine," I told her, moving into the kitchen and taking two glasses down out of the cabinet. "Would you like some milk with yours, or would you prefer water instead?"

She was quiet for a moment or two, and I imagined that was the longest time that she'd been silent for so long, when she wasn't asleep, that is. "Milk will be fine," she called to me after that moment of hesitation, followed by more chattering. "I mean, you don't have to get me any milk, because I don't have to have any of the brownies. I already had three before I brought these to you, and I really don't need anymore, do I….?"

She continued to blab, but I tuned her out as I filled both glasses to the brim and placed brownies on the little saucers that were supposed to hold teacups, two for her and five for me. That would place us on even ground, which seemed fair to me, and that still left me with ten more brownies that I wouldn't have to share with anyone.

"Here you go," I said, placing her glass and plate on the coffee table in front of her, smiling to myself as her words died away while she stared at what I'd offered her with eyes that had widened until they seemed to cover the entire upper half of her face.

I took a seat in the big, comfy recliner that I'd bought for myself and immediately took a bite out of a brownie, expecting the sweet that I knew and loved and finding something altogether different, something that made me close my eyes in bliss. It was everything that I knew and loved, but the buttery, slightly salty caramel and the toasted pecans in the center made for a taste experience that was, for lack of a better word, downright heavenly, and I scarfed down all five in about thirty seconds, without wasting time on the milk, and I was in the process of draining my glass before I remembered that I wasn't alone in the room and I opened my eyes to look at Lily and found her staring at me, instead of at the glass and the saucer, with the same wide eyes and dumbfounded look.

"Aren't you going to eat yours?" I asked self-consciously, knowing that I'd made a complete pig of myself. "They're really good."

That probably wasn't the best thing that I could have said, but my mind was kind of fuzzy at the moment, and I had to work with the material that I had, no matter how crappy it was. "Your milk is going to get warm if you just let it sit there, you know?" Hmm, that wasn't the wittiest thing that I could have said either, in fact it was even worse than the bit about the brownies, wasn't it? Maybe I ought to just keep my mouth shut, maybe that was the best course of action, to wait for her to speak…but why wasn't she talking, for crying out loud? Just a few minutes ago she'd been chattering nonstop, but now her lips were sealed. What was up with that, and furthermore, why the hell did I care?

"Thanks," she said suddenly, and her eyes went back to normal, and then reflected the smile that took hold of her lips. "But one is all that I need, so you can have the other one, if you want it."

"I'll save it for later," I told her, settling back in my chair and rubbing my hand on my stomach. I would have liked to have had it then, but I'd already made a glutton of myself.

I could see that she was self-conscious to eat in front of me, so I was careful to keep my eyes off of her until she was finished; filling the time with the sort of polite chitchat that normally irritated the hell out of me. It was the strangest thing, to have woken this morning in a dinky, dingy motel room, then traveled to my new apartment, with no desire other than to be left alone, to heal as best as I could on my own, before I had to return to the world and live and work amongst others, like a normal person, only to find myself entertaining my next-door neighbor, who'd come over uninvited, and find that not only did I not mind her company, but that I actually enjoyed it as well…who would have thought that such a thing was possible?